The Devil You Know

About the book

In Edina, Minnesota, a well-to-do suburb of Minneapolis, nice people don’t talk about dirty things like domestic abuse. And so David Geist, fifteen years old and an up-and-coming track star, keeps his secrets to himself. No good can come of anyone knowing about the late-night beatings he has suffered at the hands of his now-absent father, Max, and the psychological humiliation that went along with them. Besides, David is too busy keeping his bereft mother calm and his troubled little sister happy to focus on his own problems; he knows he’s the linchpin holding his precarious family together. But as David’s parents attempt a reconciliation, David is forced to confront his own deep anger at the man who made his childhood a living hell. When Max proposes a ten-day canoe trip in the wilderness of the Boundary Waters—an outing designed to win his children’s trust—David and his sister agree to go, gingerly hopeful, but braced for the worst.

Two parties approach their deadly run-in. Why does the hum of the Coke machine by the phone booth become a significant detail at the end of the novel? Why doesn’t David mention the incident to his father?

As Jack begins to understand the depth of his sister’s complicity in the meat-stealing scheme, he thinks, “Scratch the surface and don’t be surprised what’s under . . . but he was always surprised anyway. Always, he wanted to believe people were better than they were, himself included.” Is Jack a victim of his own naiveté? Could he have avoided this whole mess if he’d “scratched the surface” sooner? In a situation as nefarious as this one, at what point do you think family responsibility falls away? Is Jack right to try to help his sister?

Five pages into the novel, David envisions himself divested of all human burdens: “He empties his mind of one thing after another, as if casting off physical baggage . . . all that he jettisons . . . running lighter . . . until the time he is only breath, and motion, free, in his dream of life nothing sticking to him, even himself—no, especially himself.” Nearly three hundred pages later, trudging toward help, David has the same fantasy: “He wanted to lift up, light, free, a bird, gliding on invisible currents . . . weightless, a spirit, a nothing . . . pure, beautiful, nothing.” Can it be argued that every character in the novel is motivated by a desire to divest of the self? If so, describe this desire and how it plays out in Penry, Max, Jack, Rachel, Janie, Munson, and perhaps even Buddy.

David receives moments of attention that are fatherlike from various men in the novel. Jack Carpenter offers him badly needed advice by gesturing him away from the argument between Max and the men. Gaiwin offers him unconditional solidarity and companionship. Cliff Hoffarber offers him validation (“You did all right, son”) at perhaps his most desperate moment. His track coach offers him unspoken protection when he does not let on about the lead baton. Does David grasp the significance of these deeds? What point do you think the author is making about the nature of fatherhood?

Throughout the novel, we are offered glimmers of Munson’s potential as a good guy, which is invariably crushed by his herd mentality. His ultimate excuse for going forward with Penry’s scheme is that “he already felt ruined.” To what extent is this novel a study in despair? Does the author suggest that Munson could have made different choices if he’d tried harder?

David’s discovery of the cabin, complete with its lamps and fuel, food, and dry clothing, is timed perfectly in the narrative to correspond with reader fatigue. In other words, we almost can’t take another moment of tension and upset at this point in the story—thus we get maximum satisfaction out of the cabin episode. Where else do you see the author’s skillful use of rhythm and timing? Do you think The Devil You Know is suited to screen adaptation, or is the work too word-driven to make an effective film?

Much is made of the survival gear involved in the canoe trip—both the gear that David provides, and that which Max fails to provide. What emotional survival gear do David, Janie, and Max bring to this journey? When does it fail them, and when does it actually enable them to survive? Discuss David’s improvisational skills, both tactical and emotional.

Why does Gaiwin provide David with only six of the bullets?

David’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility and self-determination cause him to blame himself unfairly for almost everything—“so that If I had onlys stemmed and blossomed and multiplied tenfold from actions he could only guess the outcome of, some of them seeming inconsequential at the time.” By delving deeply into David’s if I had onlys throughout the narrative, what point is the author making? That every minute action in life has a ripple effect? Or that fate happens regardless of our actions—and by being overly scrupulous, we torment ourselves?

The Devil You Know is a cautionary tale about the dehumanizing effects of underpaying labor in general, and the meatpacking industry specifically. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, meatpacking is the most dangerous occupation in the United States, with a serious injury rate five times the national average. And according to a spate of recent media investigations, it is an industry notorious for substandard pay, unionization conflicts, illegal immigrant labor pitted against local labor, and the falsification of injury records. During the writing of this discussion guide, a worker in a Kansas City meatpacking plant went berserk and killed five fellow employees before committing suicide. Discuss how Dysart, the plant in the novel, contributes to the feeling of disenfranchisement that leads Penry, Munson, and Stacey to commit their crimes. In the author’s estimation, what would bring about the reforms necessary to this industry?

David’s decision to prepare to kill Buddy is uncharacteristically calculating and merciless. Do you read this as a trauma-induced glitch in David’s mind? Or is it an understandable logic, given his realization that “He had failed up north because he’d been surprised, and unprepared”? After he attacks Buddy, does his urge to kill simply dissipate or do you think it is a permanent feature of David’s now? Why do you think the author chooses not to tell us what happens with Buddy after this incident?

“In the quietest moments . . . we tell our stories,” writes Johnson. “All we have are our stories, and embedded in them are ourselves, what bits or pieces remain, that we carry, or are carried in us, what of ourselves we can grasp, even as we, too, are passing away.” Yet, David “talked to no one about it after,” and as the novel closes, Janie’s boyfriend has heard nothing of her ordeal. Discuss this irony. Are there ways we tell our stories without verbalizing them?

The events that unfold in the gorgeous waterways separating Canada and Minnesota, however, transcend even David’s nightmares. When Max’s foolish bravado snags the attention of a gang of four down-and-out friends on a dark journey of their own, the Geists become the victims of a savage cat-and-mouse game that will forever alter the lives of everyone involved. In the wake of a vicious attack, David must rely on intuition, logic, and brute strength to single-handedly transport his fallen father and sister to safety before their enemies find them and finish them off.

Author Wayne Johnson underscores the dazzling life-or-death action of his story with a brilliant counterplay between David’s interior monologue and the spiraling desperation of his pursuers. The resulting cacophony explores in pure, honed language the complexity of forgiveness, the nature of kindness, and the ability of the human spirit to survive.

Questions for discussion

David is a creature of moral absolutes. He vows never to forget Max’s violence toward him, never to utter one word that might hurt his mother; never to let Janie down in any way. How does this rigidity limit him? Does it affect your ability to like him as a character? Does it change over the course of the novel?

On page two of the novel, as David strides toward Buddy on the school field, the author writes, “What happens now will eventually culminate in the death of one of David’s family; and, in his thinking when it is all over, perhaps worse. What happens now will change David’s life forever . . . ” It’s an unusual stylistic choice. Why does Johnson prepare us in this way for all that is to come? Why not leave the approaching threat vague?

David first becomes aware of the men on his way to the phone booth. How does the author make this scene particularly nerveracking? Discuss the devices he uses to create tension as the

Stacey is described as following “in his drunken father’s footsteps”; Munson “had no father, had been looking for one all his life without knowing it”; Penry despises the guys for knocking him around “just like his father did”; and David is aware both that his quickness to anger is “a gift from his father,” and that Max’s gruffness is a result of his having had no father. How does this theme of the paternal imprint contribute to the novel? What do you make of David’s musing that there are “no real fathers in the world perhaps, but constructions of fathers”?

Johnson describes Penry as the group’s scapegoat: “Fool, idiot, clown, dumbshit, failure—and much worse—he had become the physical personification of all that his so-called friends feared in themselves, and because he brought it out, where they could see it, and make light of it, he was precious to them.” To what extent does Max use David as a scapegoat?

David is fatigued from having to “manufacture a personality to show to the world”; Janie is worn out from clowning to please the family—“she was so tired from it, it was killing her”; and David guesses that Max’s “entrapment in himself . . . had to be exhausting.” At what point do these characters allow their true selves to show? Are they ever released from their self-imposed exhaustion?

The Devil You Know explores in exquisitely painful detail the subtle and not-so-subtle humiliations teenagers suffer at the hands of their parents and classmates. Why is this theme significant to the story? Do you think that David overreacts to Max’s jibes?

When and how do moments of grace punctuate the misery of the canoe trip?